Help! Our school is a Responsive Classroom school,
where the students come up with the classroom rules.
I am using WBT in my classroom and it works!

My principal is asking me...How come my students
didn't make up their own rules? How can I respond?
Help!!!! After 13 years of teaching, I found WBT to
work for me and now, I feel like I have to defend myself!!!

I teach GED classes for students that dropped out of high school. Part of how I have implimented WBT is that I have the class make up their own rules, but then compare it to what I have made already. If something someone said fits into the WBT rules, great. If something doesn't, we add it to the list. I really only worry about the WBT rules, however.

It might be an idea to have the students come up with thier own rules and figure out a way to make all of them fit into the rules of WBT, then just go with those rules. If justification is needed to the principal, maybe you could say how solid the WBT (maybe without mentioning it by name) rules are and how every rule someone can come up with fits into that framework because it is so solid and universal. As with many techniques of WBT, I attempt to steer the students as much as I can to make them feel like they are in charge, eventhough I know I am.

Since many of my students are adults, I close the rules discussion by sumarizing everything into three rules: Make smart choices, respect each other, and respect the school property. Most rules anyone has come up with seem to fit (or I make it fit). Some rules, such as raise your hand to go to the bathroom, I don't use, since they are adults and I tell them they can excuse themselves at any time to go to the bathroom. It has always seemed to work that I just go ahead and enforce the WBT rules irregardless of what we discussed as a class, although I do mention everything.

Hope this helps or at least may give you some ideas.

Good luck!

I replied to a post similar to this, my school is a make your day school. I'm not sure if you heard of it, but if not the program consists of only one rule. We just started this program and we are not allowed to implement any other rules. Like you I love the WBT 5 rules, so I started calling them the 5 expectaations. I state to students these are not rules, this is what I expect of you. Maybe you can create a set of class rules and use the 5 WBT rules as expectations.

I had a similar situation. I had each of the students write down a rule that they felt was important to our class. Then once each student had written the rule (they did these on sentence strips) I showed the students the five rules that I felt were most important. I posted these rules on the front whiteboard and then I had students take turns saying their rule and deciding where their rule fit into my important rules. Guess what? They all can fit! The best part was~ one of the major (and often repeated) rules that the students came up with was "Listen to your teacher." We categorized this under "Follow directions quickly" (because of course how can you follow directions if you are not listening to the teachers directions:). So I clothespinned my rules up to our blinds and then taped each one of their rules below my rule. The best part was when we said Rule: 1~ the students would say the rule and do the handmotion, but then I would say "and that means...." and they would read their rules...which of course after rule 1 was several different versions of "Listen to your teacher."
Loved hearing that!
Thankfully I no longer have to do that~ but trust me you can still work around it!

Love that idea, Andrea! What a great idea to incorporate student buy-in!